Twig

by wildbow

“Primordials?” Mabel asked. “Released?”

  The questions seemed to be reflected in the faces of everyone present that was wearing an academy uniform.

  “This is a bigger concern than the fact that you’re saying she created the red plague?” Neck asked.

  “It’s a bigger concern,” Bea said.

  “And both are a long story,” I said. “I’m actually not so sure on the plague, but things add up, and it feels like her, which should say it all.”

  “Listen,” Jessie said. “For what it’s worth, as much as Fray slides down that slippery slope, and whether she stops there or she decides that she’s willing to stake a nation to win a contest with global stakes, Sylvester is scaling up that same slope, going the opposite way.”

  I tilted my head, giving Jessie a surprised look.

  She said, “He wasn’t always the gentle soul you see before you now. There was a time when it was just him and his fellow experiments, myself included, and the rest of the world didn’t matter. That’s changed. Fray says she wants to protect humanity, but it feels like she’s forgotten the individual humans along the way. Sylvester’s found them, in the meantime.”

  “I can testify that that’s the case,” Shirley said, from the back corner of the room.

  “Yeah,” Rudy said. Possum nodded beside him.

  “Beautifully put,” I murmured to Jessie, teasing.

  “Shut up,” she said. She pushed my shoulder.

  But, among this crowd of very individual humans, it seemed to be what they needed to hear. It seemed to have won over Bea, who had been less than wholly enthusiastic, and it seemed to have gotten the attention of the student council leaders.

  “Then I’ll echo Mabel’s question from earlier,” Valentina said. “What’s next?”

  “Next, we address the two hundred or so students that are down in the lobby. Because they want and deserve answers,” I explained.

  “Without Ralph,” Valentina said.

  “The Greenhouse Gang knew that he was leaving. He made no secret about it,” Mabel said. “It should be fine.”

  “Good,” I said. “Great. Any final comments? Dissent? Questions?”

  There were none. It seemed we had them on board, more or less.

  I stood, and they stood from their seats alongside me.

  Our collected allies backing us, we headed for the stairs. We walked halfway down.

  “Three hundred and twenty students,” Jessie said, leaning in closer to my ear.

  The tone of the hubbub and chatter changed as more caught sight of us. The change in the sound of the room drew more attention, and more people came in from outside.

  “Three hundred and sixty students,” Jessie amended her statement. “And…”

  “I see her too,” I said.

  At the back of the room, filtering in among the students, was Genevieve Fray. Black hair fashionably styled, crimson lipstick, black coat, and heeled boots.

  She folded her arms and settled in, seemingly to watch the proceedings.

  I drew in a deep breath.

  “Students of Beattle!” I addressed the room, raising my voice to cut through the chatter. “I see several citizens of Laureas here, and other esteemed guests.”

  The room was silent, as I paused, assessing the tone of things.

  “My name is Sylvester Lambsbridge. Behind me stand several key members of Beattle’s student body. Student council, disciplined academics, troublemakers, and free spirit alike. Several of the men you see are local gang leaders. Others are my partners, employees, and assistants. We stand together in this, and if you’re willing, we’d have you stand with us.”

  Fray was silent, watching with a steady eye. Her body language was hard to read.

  “Many or most of you students of Beattle don’t want to go home. Not now, maybe not ever. Many don’t want to let your academic dreams die here. Many of you don’t want to turn in papers, books, and uniform and sit down for that speech or assembly, where they tell you that you cannot continue your studies or use any of what you spent the last several years learning.”

  The cracks I’d seen in the ranks weren’t as bad, now. The agitation wasn’t there. The people standing clearly askance had clearly relaxed, their backs or shoulders no longer turned away or to one side, their gazes less suspicious or antagonistic. Having the student groups clearly behind me helped. Many of these students were ones that were recognized and known among the student body.

  “I’m offering you work, using the knowledge you have. I’m offering you the freedom to find your own way, on the side opposite that which promised you an education and snatched it away at the last minute. If you’re angry at them, then I can give you a role which will let you vent that anger. And if you just want to find your own way, I can position you to do that.”

  I glanced at Jessie, then back at the students and assembled men, women, and rabbits behind me.

  Then I addressed the crowd again. “There’s a lot to be said for being done with the uniform. There’s more to be said for being unified. No longer being rank forty or rank sixty or rank one hundred, looking at fellow students as opposition. No more fancying a girl or fancying a boy and wondering how courting them would affect your grades, or calculating how it might affect theirs.

  “We’ve seen civil war across the Crown States in recent years. We’re going to see more. I suspect it may be perpetual, lasting as long as the Crown does. I just explained to the students behind me that I want your voices and your talents, and I’ll pay you for those things, in actual payment, but also in helping you to navigate the world that exists beyond the Academy…”

  I explained, the crowd listened, and Fray remained where she was, unreadable.

  ☙

  I walked through the crowd with purpose. People talked to me as I did so, reached for my hand, and commented, and I tried to recognize each of them.

  I forged through to Fray, who didn’t make her way to me, but who didn’t retreat either.

  I gestured to students to stay back as I approached her. We walked outside, standing a short distance outside.

  “Hello, Genevieve,” I said.

  “Hello, Sylvester,” she replied. She uncrossed her arms and put her hands in her pockets. She sighed. “I was just telling Dolores that I’ve had the most surreal day.”

  “Oh, you’ve got her there with you?”

  “Of course. She’s getting old, yet she remains a good listener.”

  “Surreal day, you said?”

  “My day started as expected, but somewhere along the way, the Academy found me with unerring accuracy, multiple events coincided to keep me from making my way to the Academy, the gang of youths I’d conscripted outright disappeared while my back was turned, and when I finally made it to the Academy, neither my messenger nor any of the student groups I’d planned to meet were there. Every student I talked to either had no interest in what was happening or they outright lied to my face, trying to lead me on wild goose chases.”

  “I suppose I should apologize.”

  “It was almost amusing when I realized what was happening and who the culprit was. Almost,” she said. She didn’t smile. “We should talk.”

  “Shall we go upstairs?” I offered.

  “I don’t feel like braving that crowd,” she said. “Will you walk with me?”

  “No tricks? No ambush?” I asked.

  “That’s how you operate, Sylvester,” she said. She allowed me one small smile, this time. “I talked to Mauer. I’m worried you’re on a dangerous path.”

  I glanced back at the body of students.

  “Not them. Not this. It’s about what you found back in New Amsterdam.”

  I read her expression, listened to her tone, and concluded, “Either you don’t know and you want to know, which is a bit of a shot in the dark, possibly with a fair amount of generous bargaining, which I’d be willing to entertain, or you do know.”

  I could see it on her face as I said those last three words.
r />   “You do know,” I repeated myself.

  “I’ve known from the beginning. Some of it was deduction, using what I learned as I was offered the position of esteemed professorship. Not just any professorship, but the sort afforded to professors of note, when they were trying to decide if I’d walk a path where I’d soon run an Academy of my own, or if I’d tend to a noble. It’s part of why they’re so bent on finding and killing me, which, in turn, is why I’ve had to devote so much mental architecture to being elusive with the Academy’s dogs on my heels. Yourself included, once.”

  That same elusiveness doesn’t help if your enemy deduces your path and lies in wait on the path ahead of you.

  “So you’ve known all this time, and you haven’t used it? What was that thing with Mauer then?”

  “Walk with me,” Fray said. “There’s a great deal to cover, and some will be unpleasant.”

  Previous Next

  Bitter Pill—15.14

  We walked a distance away from the building, and as Fray indicated a direction, I didn’t object.

  “Terms and expectations,” she said. She walked with her hands in her pockets. Her jacket was buttoned up to the point that the collar touched her chin. Her bearing was confident enough that it didn’t seem to bother her, where others might have found it got in the way.

  “Terms and expectations?”

  “For our discussion here,” she said.

  “Ah,” I said. I paused. “Do we need those?”

  “First of all, I’m not leading you into a trap as we speak. I have no intention of harming you, misleading you, taking action against your… burgeoning faction, or allowing others to do so. That’s not how I operate,” she said.

  “I’ve gathered as much.”

  “And I would appreciate if you didn’t wrap up your business here by severely inconveniencing me.”

  “Ah,” I said. “For someone as secure as you are, I’m surprised you’re that worried.”

  “The Lambs are on their way, Sylvester. They’ll be in the city before the day is out. They’ll likely be mired in your business and mine before midnight, given the chance.”

  I blinked, then began working things through in my head. Jessie would have a better idea of timing, train schedules. Then there were permutations: how the Lambs interacted with the wounded and dying Beattle Academy and the Horse that led it, the vectors by which they would trace their way to Jessie and me, their methods, the likelihood of attack, their interactions with local gangs, the stray children, the students, the truths and lies they could tell those same students and stray children…

  And Fray, with their interactions with her, and everything that could unfold from that.

  “I’m still surprised you’re that concerned. Were we really such a nuisance for you before?”

  “The Lambs were more predictable before, and one is right here, walking and talking with me, less predictable than he once was. Obviously, given how today went. What’s the old adage? You don’t have to outrun the bear…”

  “You have to outrun the slowest member of your camping troupe. You’re afraid I’ll hamstring you and leave you as a nice, tied-up present for the Lambs, to better cover my retreat.

  “And to better their circumstance,” she said.

  Before she’d even brought up the bear analogy, I’d had the mental image of Fray in a locked room lingering in one corner of my brain. She’d been banging on the door, while I said something witty and watched the Lambs approach at a run through the window. I hadn’t decided on the witty thing to say, so the thought had been unfinished, a scattered image waiting to be rounded out.

  Reluctantly, I banished the thought from my head.

  “I’ll play along,” I said. “No using you as bait for the bear. Assuming you’re playing fair too.”

  “I’ll play fair and try to make the concession worth your while,” she said. She blew into her hands and rubbed them together.

  My thoughts were on the Lambs, now. It took some effort to compartmentalize them, and to keep thoughts from sprawling out from those individual points. Too tempting, too complicated, too distracting.

  Fray was my focus now.

  I glanced at her hands as she rubbed them together.

  She caught me looking. “Syringes built into my fingers. It affected my circulation and my extremities run a hair colder than normal.”

  “Well maybe you shouldn’t hide syringes in your fingers, then.”

  A part of me wanted to get a rise out of her, to see if she could be made flustered, and if any insights could be gleaned.

  “I was pleased to see Jamie,” she said.

  I gave her a sidelong glance.

  “Whatever his or her name is now.”

  “Her,” I said. “Jessie.”

  “I was pleased,” she repeated herself, affirming the fact. “I really believed it when I read that Jamie had died.”

  “That was the intention,” I said.

  “Of course,” she said. Then, abrupt, she said, “You’ve grown.”

  This was a side of her I’d forgotten, as Fray had devolved into a greater series of schemes. Of plots and things I had to account for, a lifeform that had been stitched together in the background, extending its reach and producing plague here and primordials there, nudging rebel groups into life.

  I’d nearly forgotten I could talk to her and she could put me off balance so adroitly. Possibly without even meaning to.

  “Was a tense moment, back there,” I said. “Thought I might not grow at all, but it happened. I’m still short for my age.”

  “You’ve grown in other ways,” she said. “How you function, how you approach the world.”

  “And you haven’t?” I asked.

  “The last few years have felt like a blur. I’ve been working on things, I’m still setting the stage for what I want to do in the future, and the weeks melt into the months, and months melt into seasons. Time passes quickly. I’m not sure how much I’ve changed in the meantime.”

  “I’m not sure either,” I said. “I saw a glimpse of something ugly during our first meeting, and I’m not sure if that brute of a woman that sterilized twenty-five million Crown citizens and hooked them on the water supply is the same that made the primordials or started the spread of the plague of ravage.”

  “That wasn’t me,” she said.

  I raised an eyebrow. “Which?”

  “The ravage. Red plague, reminiscence, whatever you want to call it. I wasn’t responsible.”

  I stopped in my tracks. She progressed a few more steps, stopped, and turned to face me.

  “Really,” she said.

  I studied her, looking for any clues in body language. She wasn’t a proficient liar, but she was guarded. Some of it had to do with how she kept a part of herself at bay, a weapon hidden beneath the clothes, that wasn’t a blue ringed octopus named Dolores.

  “Talk to me about it,” I told her.

  “I studied the plague. Because I did think I might be able to use it, find the source, or disable it and leverage the cure for my agenda. It’s elegant. Elegant enough that we probably already know the name of the culprit. ‘We’ being the doctors and scientists of the Academy. He’ll be one of the geniuses, on par with Helen’s creator, Professor Ibbot. I would actually like to find him, because I think he has an agenda.”

  “An agenda?”

  “The plague has spread far, far further than they’re willing to admit, Sylvester,” Fray said. “There’s a part and parcel of it that remains dormant for nine to seventeen days. The plague has erupted in Mauer’s wake and Cynthia’s wake for some time. After violent confrontations, including the one you witnessed in New Amsterdam, we see outbreaks. It looked like human agents, trying to make a point, pin something on Mauer.”

  “Looked like? But it isn’t. It’s part of the design.”

  “It’s punitive. Rebels appear and fight for a city, and in the aftermath, hours, days, or two weeks later, the plague hits. It likes the taste of
battlefields, fresh or old, it flourishes, and it spreads like a wildfire, carpeting the area.”

  “People are going to catch on, and when they do… the rebellion will become something they fear. Is this the Crown?”

  “I don’t know,” Fray said. “But I’m keeping my lips sealed. I’m waiting for the Crown to find someone to fight with that isn’t the rebellion. Because if a cure emerges… or if the flowers don’t bloom in the wake of their battles, then it was likely them.”

  “What if it isn’t the Crown?”

  “If the Crown wages the war and the cure doesn’t emerge, if the plague is indiscriminate and follows them, then it’s someone else’s play. Someone that might hold a high rank who also has an agenda of aggressive peace, even if that peace means that countless millions die or are succumbed to quarantine. If every war means plague follows, with everyone losing the city they fought for, war loses its flavor, even for the Crown. Things settle into an ugly stasis, with nobody making more ground, and the plague still erupts now and again as people accidentally activate the necessary trigger elements. We get regular reminders that it exists, until such a time that it’s cured and eliminated.”

  My mind ticked over the permutations, the ways it might have unfolded, with this new information.

  “If that person with that agenda exists, I need to find them.”

  “What if that’s not the agenda?” I asked her. “What if we don’t settle down into a kind of peace? What if we’re not capable?”

  “Then it’s all the more punitive, isn’t it? It might be a punishment that takes decades or centuries to recover from, if we ever recover fully from it,” Fray said. “It would be all the more important that I find the person responsible, because he won’t stop here. We need the answers he can provide, whatever his motivations.”

  “What if they aren’t around anymore? What if he fled to other parts of the world?”

  “I don’t know, Sylvester.”

  “Is this the part where you ask me to help you? You’ve outlined the stakes, something we should all be concerned about, and now’s the part where you say that the best and brightest are Crown and Academy, that they’re people you can’t access, and you need me to infiltrate and help you access and figure out who it might be?”